Solar Cycle 25 Blog

A relatively quiet stretch for the sun in recent years does not necessarily herald an impending solar activity low of historic proportions, a new study reports.

The sun was quiescent from 2005 to 2010, spouting off relatively few flares and eruptions of solar plasma known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). That dry spell lasted about twice as long as usual, prompting some scientists to predict that a "grand minimum" of solar activity — the likes of which hasn't been seen in 300 years — could be on the way.

But the opposite could just as easily be true, the study suggests.

"[A]fter looking at data of past solar activity, we have pointed out that it is just as likely that the sun will go into a grand maximum again (it just came out of one) than into a grand minimum," said study lead author Sami Solanki, of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPISSR) in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany.

Another sunspot number record for Solar Cycle 24 has been shattered: On Wednesday, November 9, the daily sunspot number reached 220, the highest it has been in more than eight years.

The last time the sunspot number was higher than 220 was November 1, 2003 when the number was 277. The next day -- November 10 -- the daily sunspot number dropped back to 164. Two days before it reached 277 in 2003, the sunspot number was 330, a harder record to beat.

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Latest from SpaceWeather.com..INCOMING CME: A CME is heading for Earth. It left the sun on Nov. 9th when a magnetic filament in the vicinity of sunspot complex 1342-1343 erupted. The M1-class explosion hurled a bright cloud of plasma into space.....Although the eruption was not squarely aimed at Earth, the CME is likely to deliver a glancing blow to our planet's magnetic field on Nov. 11th or 12th. NOAA forecasters estimate a 25% chance of high-latitude geomagnetic storms...Click SpaceWeather Link for more inc. Video

If you think Solar Cycle 24 is weaker and still progressing slower than previous solar cycles? You are correct. For a comparison of Solar Cycles 21, 22, 23 and 24, click here for more.

Our Sun continues to be very active, with most days revealing more sunspots. We saw one new sunspot group on October 9, another on October 10, two more on October 11 and two more on October 12. But that’s not all: There was another on October 13, two more on October 15, two more on October 17, one more on October 19 and three more on October 20. There have been 28 new sunspot groups making an appearance in the last 30 days. But the biggest news is the sunspot number yesterday, Thursday, October 20. The daily sunspot number was 195, a level not equaled or bettered since nearly eight years ago, on November 26, 2003, when it was 209. The closest the daily sunspot number came to equaling Thursday’s value was on July 4, 2005 when it was 192.

A German climate researcher has discovered that the surge in solar radiation that began in 1700, peaked in 1960 and is still at historically high levels was far stronger and more significant than had previously been realized.

According to Dr. Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, who spent months comparing the varying widths of annual tree-rings and stalagmite deposits with recent temperature and sunspot records, this remarkable increase in solar activity was the real reason why the weather got warmer from 1950-2000. There has been no warming since 2000.

Dr. Lüdecke reports his major discovery in the latest issue of the acclaimed climate-science journal Energy and Environment.

His discovery is consistent with earlier results from Professor Sami Solanki in Finland, who reported in the journal Science six years ago that the Sun’s activity in the second half of the 20th century had been greater than during almost any similar period since the end of the last Ice Age 11,400 years ago.

NASA says it will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT (6 p.m. GMT) on Thursday to reveal near-Earth asteroid findings and implications for future research. The briefing will take place at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, launched in December 2009, captured millions of images of galaxies and objects in space. During the news conference, panelists will discuss results from an enhancement of WISE called Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE) that hunted for asteroids.

The conference takes place on the same week that a 13-metre-wide asteroid, named SE58, passed within 0.6 Lunar Distances of Planet Earth. SE58′s approach occured in the early hours of Tuesday 27 September 2011.

The NASA conference also coincides with an ESA (European Space Agency) seminar on Space Situational Awareness, which also be held on Thursday in Warsaw, Poland. Participants will include senior managers, policy-makers and scientists from ESA, ESA Member States, the EU, European institutions and international partner organisations.

AURORAS UNDERFOOT: Solar activity is picking up, and no one has a better view of its effect on Earth than the crew of the International Space Station. During a geomagnetic storm on Sept. 17th, astronauts recorded a must-see movie of auroras dancing underfoot:

Note how the underbelly of the space station glows green from the reflected light of the auroras below. Also, in the distance, Sirius the dog star and Orion the Hunter can be seen rising feet-first into the night sky.

No phenomenon in astronomy has been studied more closely than solar flares, gigantic eruptions on the Sun that can affect Earth's climate and even disrupt power grids. Scientists have been watching the Sun with ground based instruments and orbiting satellites for years, so it might be thought that we know a lot about such eruptions. Well think again. A new report from NASA has revealed that, like earthquakes, solar flares often have aftershocks. Moreover, the aftershocks can emit bursts of ultraviolet (UV) radiation more powerful than the original eruption. Combine this new finding with the recently uncovered linkage between fluctuating UV levels and El Niño, and the Sun-Climate connection looks stronger than ever.

In a report, published in The Astrophysical Journal, NASA scientists are reporting that solar flares generate considerably more energy than previously suspected. About 1 flare in 7 experiences an “aftershock” around ninety minutes after the flare dies down. “We call it the ‘late phase flare,’” says Thomas N. Woods, a physicists at the University of Colorado and lead author. “The energy in the late phase can exceed the energy of the primary flare by as much as a factor of four.” The major findings are detailed in the article's abstract below:

Sept. 19, 2011: One hundred and fifty two years ago, a man in England named Richard Carrington discovered solar flares.

It happened at 11:18 AM on the cloudless morning of Thursday, September 1st, 1859. Just as usual on every sunny day, the 33-year-old solar astronomer was busy in his private observatory, projecting an image of the sun onto a screen and sketching what he saw. On that particular morning, he traced the outlines of an enormous group of sunspots. Suddenly, before his eyes, two brilliant beads of white light appeared over the sunspots; they were so bright he could barely stand to look at the screen.